Perhaps it was my lack of understanding of the music industry, or just bad luck, but I have never been able to figure out
how to land a recording contract. For a long time it was, to some degree, from lack of trying. I figured that someday a
recording executive would hear my music and decide that it was time to document it. Hah! I finally realized that if I
wanted to document my music I'd have to do it myself. And so I founded Reckless DC Music in the early 1990s as an outlet
for my musical work. The label serves both as a publishing company and a recording company. To date I have released five
CDs on this label and all have had the good fortune of being celebrated by the critics both in the print and electronic press.
I'm hoping to continue to release music on this label and have about three good ideas for album projects currently under
consideration. For those who might be curious, I've listed the Reckless DC catalogue below.

When I started to write about this album I realized that although we recorded it in a single evening, we have really spent several years planning it. This is the third album of Jewish and African-American sacred music that Warren and I have released, but it is also a band project in the fullest sense. For the past two years we have been jamming regularly at The Buttonwood Tree, a small performance space in Middletown, Connecticut. We've treated the gig as a workshop where we could experiment with our sound, our line-up, and our material. When we went into the studio most of us had been living with these tunes for a good long while-some even go back to the days of Bassology. For example, we've been playing Shir LaShalom on and off ever since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, but the version that we recorded-with a traditional African drumming introduction--was unlike any that we had ever performed. The other thing is that this recording is something of a Connecticut super session. Each of the band members is an extraordinary player and is also the leader of his own group. You might think that would lead to clashes and ego conflicts, but the opposite takes place. We all work together and the flow is supercharged and profound. I can't say enough about the individual contributions to the recording--at any given moment each player stands out. Good stuff. As Warren puts it, "This is big fun." I'd like to think Emma Lazarus is putting on her dancing shoes.

This live recording comes from one of the first concerts of Jewish and African-American sacred music that Warren and I ever gave.
I think you can hear the tension in the music. There's a sense, to my ears, that we are really communicating, and that we are
trying to figure this all out. And I think the result is that it comes together in all of the right ways. The critics seemed
to think so too. George Robinson included the album in his Best of 1998 list in the Jewish Week. He wrote:

"A brilliant piano-bass duo reading of tunes from the Jewish and African-American sacred traditions and easily the best
record I've reviewed this year. Warm, intelligent and swinging..."

Bassology, The Feeling That I Get, 1998, RMCD-1024
1 Rage Against the Machine (Parts 1 and 2) 7:52
2 Portrait of Julie: The End of the Rainbow 6:58
3 Anna-leila 5:22
4 You Oughta Know 4:14
5 Cruella DeVil 5:21
6 Introitus 8:28
7 If Ever I Had to Dance (dedicated to Benny Carter) 4:32
8 St. Julienne of the Sewing Machine 6:33
9 The Feeling That I Get 8:34
10 Wichi-Tai-Tao 4:56

DAVID CHEVAN
Bass

WILL BARTLETT
Saxophones

RONALD BRAGGS
Drums

WARREN BYRD
Piano

JOHN FUMASOLI
Trombone

BEN PROCTOR
Trumpet

Boy did I love this band. I still do. I'm sorry that it doesn't seem to have the opportunity to play out more than once or
twice a year these days. Any band that could go from a jazz rendition of Alannis Morisette's "You Oughta Know" into a Fats
Waller tune, follow it with a cover of a Disney tune and then finish the set with a medley of originals is all right by me.
Bassology played every other Friday night at Charlie B's in New Haven for close to three years. By the time this album was
recorded we knew these arrangements by heart and could play them with a lot of feeling. We recorded the entire album in one
day and tried very hard to get that live edginess onto the album. I credit our engineer Vic Steffens with going the extra
mile in the mixing and post-production work to give it a nice overall live in the studio feel. I'm also pleased with the
two tributes on the album, "Rage Against the Machine, Parts One and Two" was written for Charles Mingus and "If I Ever Had
to Dance" is my tribute to Benny Carter. Anyone looking for hints of things to come with my Afro-Semitic projects should
check out "Introitus" or the opening bass piano duo with Warren on the title track. For that matter, we end the album with
Jim Pepper's "Wichi-Tai-To" which is a jazz rendition of a Native American sacred song.

"This is a band that knows the art of swing. Don't be fooled by all the cheap imitations being paraded before our ears
by record-industry hypesters. These guys are the real thing." Green Mountain Jazz Messenger

"A riff-driven band which loves to generate a lot of exuberant interplay." Cadence Magazine

Ron Braggs is one of New Haven's unsung heroes. He's got a great feel on the drum set and he has a terrific singing voice.
Ron reminds me of a cross between Lou Rawls and Billy Eckstine-if you can imagine that. He's got class. About a year before
Bassology left Charlie B's we got a call to play as a trio at the Avon Old Farms Inn in Avon, Connecticut. It was there that
I really got to hear Ron sing quite a bit and I knew that if I ever had the chance I wanted to document Ron's great art. We
recorded this album in about three sessions, all done in the early morning at the University of New Haven recording studio.
On half of the album we captured the sound that Ron was developing at the Avon gig and on the other half we had some fun with
a few old standards. I'm very happy that we caught Ron this way. The title track deserves to be a hit on the jazz radio
stations. The album as a whole is raw and real-and it swings like crazy. I only hope that some major label executive hears
this album and decides to come in with a big budget and record Ron big-time!!

"[Imagination] doesn't sound like it's a local or a low-budget affair. Every piece holds its own. The songs are jazz
standards and ... the disc never lets you down. It's mellow, mood-setting jazz that creates a soft hush. This is a
collection of sounds that takes chances and fills you up." New Haven Advocate

Jason Jacoby, a University of New Haven recording technology student, called me one afternoon and told me that he needed to
make a recording for his senior project. He asked me if I had anything I was interested in documenting. I immediately
thought of the Art of Trio series that Rex Cadwallader and I have been presenting at the Clinton Town Hall and the Milford
Center for the Arts. I spoke with Rex and he was enthusiastic about making an album about this concert series. We made
arrangements with five Connecticut-based musicians to come in and each record two tunes with us. All five had performed with
us before so it was just a matter of picking tunes and working out arrangements. We held a session for each of the artists
and managed to complete the recording in about a month's time. Each session has its own story, but I won't bore you with the
details. Needless to say, I was quite happy with the results. Jason did a great job of engineering and mixing the album and
he got an A for the project. He is now the recording engineer for the Mannes School of Music. As one of his former teachers,
I am quite proud of him and all that he has already accomplished.

"Rex Cadwallader on piano and David Chevan on bass are a duo that is a welcome addition to jazz music everywhere! These
guys can soar... This is an excellent CD!" Lee Prosser - www.jazzreview.com

"Cadwallader comps nicely... they do the job of providing the structure and framework for the guests to perform effectively."
Michael Gladstone - 52nd Street Reviews.com

"The Art of the Trio" is an imaginative album of straightahead jazz...a series of really charming tracks, propelled ably by
Chevan's punchy bass lines." George Robinson - Jewish Week

David Chevan and Warren Byrd, Let Us Break Bread Together: Further Explorations of the Afro-Semitic Experience, 2000, RMCD-1049

Warren and I spent two days in the studio recording this one and I think it shows. For one, we came
into this session with pieces that we had been performing in concert for almost two years. For another, our ability to communicate
with one another is, I think, much more developed and it shows. The initial tension between African-American and Jewish cultures
that is so clear on our first CD is not the central dramatic focus here. I believe that it is still present, but the tension has
been replaced by a more mature and rigorously challenging style of dialogue. We are communicating with one another at a fairly
sophisticated level and dealing with pieces that are more sophisticated in terms of the implied message and even the harmonic and
melodic structure. Having said that I also think there's a lot more room for whimsy on this recording than our first. In other
words, it is a spiritual recording and it captures who we are (or at least were when we recorded it).

Finally, people have been asking me how to get hold of Reckless DC Music CDs. I know how that it is almost impossible is to
find them in stores and I apologize for that. For whatever reason, I still haven't been able to get a distributor interested
in helping me to disseminate my music (If you are a distributor or know one, here's an opportunity awaiting you). The easiest
place to find my entire catalogue is at www.amazon.com. But the best on-line source and the one that is friendliest and most supportive of creative artists is www.cdbaby.com.
The other way to get an album is to order it directly
from me. All of my CDs are $15 apiece plus $2.50 per complete order for postage (that's $2.50 per order, not per CD, this
offer is limited to a maximum of ten CDs per order). Please make a check out to "David Chevan" and send it to: